Stephen Vance, Editor
Remember when public input sessions for municipal budgets would see turnouts of 150 (mostly angry) residents or more? My, how things have changed – but why?
Three public input sessions for the 2017 municipal budget were held last week in Annan, Bognor, and at the Riverside Community Centre, and none of the three meetings managed to attract even 20 residents. Just nine attended the meeting in Annan, ten at the Riverside Community Centre, and while there were more residents at the Wednesday night meeting in Bognor, still only about 15 residents turned out. Even when the draft budget was first presented to council a few weeks ago, there was not a single resident in the council chamber.
Some I’ve talked to about the lower turnouts at municipal budget meetings over the past few years have suggested that ratepayers have less concern at municipal budget time now, given that recent rate increases have been small in comparison to a few years ago; municipal debt has been on the decline, and rather than accumulating deficits each year, Meaford has managed some surpluses lately. Others have suggested that Meaford ratepayers have given up – they’ve become apathetic, resigned to whatever municipal staff and council cobble together.
I’m not so certain that either is true. I suspect that the reason for lower turnout to municipal budget meetings might be for two very different reasons.
For one, there is so much information available quickly and easily these days, and the municipality has done a pretty good job of ensuring that lots of budget information is available. Rather than fire up the car to drive to Annan for a budget input session, ratepayers can instead stay home by the fire and pull up all of the municipal budget documents, including the PowerPoint presentations made by municipal staff, and review them on their computer or tablet while sipping a coffee. Any questions or concerns can be quickly and easily sent off to the municipality and members of council with a simple email. In the past few years, Meaford has made incredible strides in the area of transparency, and anyone with any interest in municipal budgets can easily find themselves several evenings worth of dry reading material simply by visiting the municipal website. I know the budget articles we publish at this paper always receive a large number of reads, so I know that people still want to be informed, they just don’t need to leave home to become informed any longer.
So for the hardcore municipal government nerd, so much information is available at your fingertips these days, there’s no need to attend budget meetings – that is unless you want to ask a question in a public forum, or hear what others have to say about the budget – but even that has been improved, as all budget questions (and their answers) submitted by the public either via public meetings, or through the dedicated municipal budget email address (budgets@meaford.ca) are pooled into a document available to the public.
The second reason I think we might be seeing declining attendance at budget meetings is time. If you aren’t one of those hardcore municipal government nerds like me, or a member of the media, who has the time for a mid-week evening budget meeting? If you have a young family, you’re busy chauffeuring the kids around to karate or dance lessons, or you’re too busy preparing dinner for four after work to be able to hop in the car to drive to Bognor to attend a 6:30 p.m. municipal budget meeting – no matter how concerned you might be about potential property tax increases, or when your crumbling road might finally be fixed.
I don’t believe that the low turnout we saw at last week’s budget meetings necessarily means that everyone is happy and there are no concerns – and members of council definitely shouldn’t make that assumption. I also don’t think it means that people have simply given up the fight and have resigned themselves to whatever council decides.
That said, if residents were feeling like council and staff were on the wrong track, or if the proposed property tax increase for next year was significantly higher than what is proposed this year, you know that the public input sessions would be standing room only – there’s only so much satisfaction one can get by putting council on blast in an email, compared to doing it in front of 80 of your fellow residents at a public meeting.
Based on the talks I have had with people on the street, or those who come in to our office, people are interested, they’re paying attention, and they are engaged. They read news articles and editorials, they download all the information they need online, they take in council meetings via the live video stream rather than parking themselves on an uncomfortable chair in the council chamber, or in a chilly rural community hall.
